Huntsman

The Huntsman is a level 3 Monster. It appears as a blind hunter wearing boots, a green jacket and a hunting rifle that doubles as a cane.

Behavior[]

The Huntsman roams around aimlessly, using its rifle to navigate its surroundings. The huntsman will occasionally make a humming noise, signaling that it is nearby. With a hearing distance 5x farther than normal Monsters, the huntsman will fire upon anything nearby. This includes valuables, Semibots, doors, cupboards, and even other Monsters.

It is slow, usually quiet, and incredibly deadly. A single shot deals 100 damage to and stuns Semibots and most Monsters.

Like other monsters, the Huntsman doesn't linger long, however because of its heightened sense of hearing, the Huntsman is prone to changing its course and heading to nearby rooms if there is audible noise activity. It will attempt to reach the location of the noise, if the Huntsman does arrive to said noise, it will stop for a few seconds, then start roaming again, if the Huntsman physically contacts a Semibot, it will immediately fire. It is unable to touch Semibots that are hiding under furniture, or at high locations, but will still fire if any noise is heard in those areas.

If the Huntsman walks down a surface, it will fall and become stunned for a short moment, also usually taking physics damage.

Voice chat or text chat make applicable noise in the game. Loud talking with the Huntsman nearby can cause him to investigate, and even fire at the yapping Semibot.

Detailed AI[]

The Huntsman initially starts in the Roaming phase, where he moves around randomly within the level; upon hearing a noise, a "spherecast" is performed, where a series of spheres is projected from the Huntsman to the source of the sound in a straight line, with the size of the sphere decreasing the further away the source is; this cannot go through walls.

With the spherecast, the Huntsman performs 2 checks:

If a player is inside any of these projected spheres and within 12 units of the Huntsman, he will aim and fire at the player; if this check fails, he performs the 2nd check.
If any of these spheres touches the source of the sound and it is within 12 units of him, he will aim and fire at the source.

If the second check also fails, he will pathfind to the source of the sound, stand still for 2-8 seconds, then return to the Roaming state.

The Huntsman will also fire at the player if he physically touches a player, is grabbed by a player, or touches an item held by a player; in the third case, if the Huntsman cannot fire at the player (e.g. if they are behind a wall), he will fire at the object instead.

When the Huntsman fires, he will aim for 0.25s - 1s before firing; When aiming, he will only track his target, be it a player or the sound source, within the spheres; if the player/source moves out of the spheres, the Huntsman will stop aiming at them and miss his shot; after firing, he has a cooldown of 1.5 seconds before he can fire again.

The Huntsman has an internal counter of how many shots he has fired, and once that counter reaches 4, he will enter the Leave state, indicated by him shaking his head and sighing. While in the Leave state, he will pathfind to a location that is far away from all players, and ignores all noises that are more than 5 units away from him; if he hears a noise within 5 units of him, he will not fire either, but instead increase his "interrupt" counter by 1.

Once he reaches his chosen faraway location, his "shots fired" counter will decrease by 4; if the "interrupt" counter reaches 4, or he gets grabbed or touches a player/player-held object, he will aim and fire normally (which will still increment his "shots fired" counter), then decrease his "shots fired" counter by 4. In both cases, after decreasing the counter, if it is still at 4 or above, he will re-enter the Leave state, otherwise he will enter the Roaming state.

Lore[]

Currently, little is known about the Huntsman beyond its appearance in the games. Its bandaged, bleeding eyes suggest some form of injury. Fans have theorized that the Huntsman may have been hired to take out the Semibots, or that it could be a hunter cursed or injured by another monster, or otherwise affected by the world’s current state, some Fans also think that the Huntsman could be a human, and also could be part of the Human Group, this also sometimes applies to the Rugrat.

Audio[]

- *rifle fire sound*

- "Hah!"

- *ricochet*

Tips[]

The Huntsman will trip and fall down any stairs it walks down, dealing some damage and briefly stunning it, The Huntsman can be repeatedly baited into walking up stairs and then back down to kill the Huntsman, though this will take some time. If there are several players or one with enough strength, the Huntsman can be lifted and slammed down before the stun wears off for more damage. If there are stairs nearby a pit however, it can be easily baited to fall down, and then grabbed and thrown into the pit before the Huntsman recovers.
- The Headman Manor stage can make this entirely accidental depending on layout. Because even a tiny set of stairs can make the Huntsman trip, if one spawns in a manor that generates with outdoor areas, the constant walking in and out of those tiles will make the Huntsman constantly trip over on his own. If it does not despawn, this can result in it dying entirely without any player input.
Crouching does not make any noise, therefore by crouching, you can move around a Huntsman without alerting it.
Any sounds made close to a player will be blamed on the player as opposed to the actual source, making handling certain objects or monsters in the range of the Huntsman a dangerous task.
- For example, if an Apex Predator is following the player and makes a sound, the Huntsman will focus the shot on the player instead.
  - This can be mitigated by having the Apex Predator continuously move towards the crosshair, as it only quacks when standing still.
The player can use objects, like items or valuables, to make sound, either by slamming it or throwing it, baiting the Huntsman to fire where it heard the object.
In a room with a dead end and stairs to access it, one can repeatedly bait the Huntsman into falling down the stairs and dying by making sounds from behind a wall.
If the player has enough strength to pick the Huntsman up, it's best to bait out a shot before grabbing it.
- This is because the Huntsman usually will quickly spin around to shoot the player who grabbed him before it gets lifted off the ground.
If the Huntsman is stunned, the player does not need to follow the grab, slam, release, grab, slam pattern. Instead, they can simply grab and repeatedly slam the Huntsman.
It is possible to stun the Huntsman for a short moment by grabbing either the top or bottom half of it and rotating quickly so that its lifted off the ground long enough, making for an easy kill. It’s safest to bait out a shot first when doing this (though it is possible to do without baiting a shot), and it can be riskier to try without any range upgrades.
The rifle shot that the Huntsman fires does not appear to pierce multiple targets, though this may be wrong and is currently unconfirmed, as said below.
If a huntsman is too close to a wall when shooting, it is possible for the bullet to "pierce" the wall (essentially just spawn on the other side of it) and still do damage to anything behind it.
The Huntsman will also react to the sound of balloons being popped. This can cause friendly fire incidents if other monsters pop the balloons close to him.

Trivia[]

The Huntsman has a Despawning Animation, In it, the Huntsman will first hold its Rifle closer to itself and point the barrel upwards, then the Huntsman Will disappear in a cloud of black smoke and red circular particles, the Huntsmans Rifle will then spin, with the spin going faster as the Rifle shrinks, then disappears along with the smoke.